"Plummer floated that scenario because he feels use of AI coding tools mean developers may eventually spend their days generating code, not writing it. "If you don't use your coding skills every day, you are losing coding skills every day," he added, then concluded "AI is stealing your skills.""
"Bhat said that adoption of AI coding assistants can cause "experience compression" whe employers expect the tools will help young developers to acquire skills and improve performance in months instead of years. That thinking creates "experience starvation" - missing out on learning from being hands-on and tackling many different tasks - and leads to "erosion of critical and foundational skills.""
"Plummer also recommended taking steps to maintain critical thinking skills, and advised employers to "institute periodic reviews or testing to make sure critical skills are not being eroded by AI." He also suggested that skills erosion is one of the emerging - and largely unidentified - byproducts of using AI."
AI coding assistants can lead to developer skill atrophy by shifting work from hands-on coding to generation of code. Reduced daily practice erodes coding proficiency and critical thinking. Employers may expect faster experience acquisition, producing "experience compression" and "experience starvation" that deprives junior developers of diverse, hands-on learning. The result can be loss of foundational technical abilities and creativity that machines cannot replicate. Employers should ensure developers regularly exercise core technical and critical-thinking skills, institute periodic reviews or testing to detect erosion, and implement training and practices to maintain long-term developer competence.
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